This invention relates to bowling lanes having excellent transparency, oil resistance, weatherability (yellowing resistance), abrasion resistance and impact resistance.
Usually, bowling lanes are composed of wood the surface of which is coated with a transparent resin lacquer. However, during repeated use, the surface of the lanes is susceptible to becoming uneven due to collision or friction by balls because they are made of wood, and therefore resurfacing is needed in order to plane or whittle the wood to obtain an even or smooth surface, followed by coating the surface with a lacquer.
The resurfacing is disadvantageous not only because it requires much trouble but also because the lanes will become thinner and thinner after repeated resurfacing, i.e., repeated planing, resulting in the lanes finally becoming too thin to allow further resurfacing so that the lanes have to be replaced with new ones after a certain period of time in which the lanes are in operation for bowling. This approach is not an ultimate solution because providing new lanes is expensive and it takes a long time to replace the lanes with new ones, which means the bowling alley must be closed for a long time during repairs.
Recently, it has been proposed to provide a relatively thick resin coating on the substrate of a lane in order to avoid resurfacing of the lane and make it easier to repair it as described in JP-A-58-109563. Although this process uses a flexible epoxy resin, it suffers not only the occurrence of cracking in the resin coating layer due to the impact of balls during play but also yellowing as a result of prolonged illumination in the bowling alley.
Further proposals have been made as described in Japanese laid open utility model application 62-160987, according to which bowling lanes are coated with a flexible epoxy resin after being coated with a polyurethane resin, and in Japanese laid open utility model application 62-183882, which discloses a bowling lane coated with a polyurethane resin in a thickness not less than 1 mm. However, the bowling lanes described these publications do not meet all of the requirements of transparency, weatherability, impact resistance, abrasion resistance and oil resistance.